Cemil Candaş, a deputy mayor in Istanbul, who was killed Monday, after being shot in the head by an unknown assailant. Photo: Facebook.

A deputy mayor in Istanbul was killed on Monday, after an unknown assailant entered his office and shot him in the head, Turkey’s NTV reported.

Cemil Candas — a member of the Republican Peoples Party (CHP) which opposes President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Islamist AKP party — was deputy mayor of the Sisli district of the city.

As of yet, it is not clear whether the shooting was linked to Friday’s attempted military coup to oust Erdogan. According to NTV, though CHP has been fiercely critical of the AKP government, it released a public statement on Monday condemning “the coup attempt [against] our parliamentary democracy by a junta within Turkish Armed Forces.”

However, it also stated that, regarding “Turkey’s respectability,” the process of penalizing those responsible “should only be conducted within the limits of the rule of law.”

CORRECTION: An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated that Candas was Jewish.